Submissions (of 300 words max) are invited for inclusion at the TILT authors’ workshop on the theme of “Neurotechnological Interventions: Therapy or Enhancement” in Tilburg on 15-16th November 2012.  The workshop is part of the FP 7 RoboLaw project, and will lead to the publication of a volume with papers.

Abstracts shoud describe briefly how the paper that you intend to submit will shed new light on the traditional distinctions and arguments in the debate on human enhancement.  The use of casuistry from cognitive enhancement, neurotechnology or robotics is welcomed, but not a necessary condition.  Contributions from law, ethics, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, economics and general regulation studies are especially appreciated, but scholars in the social sciences, science and technology should not hesitate to submit.

Although individual papers may take casuistry from the fields of neurotechnology and robotics as their starting point, the workshop papers and the volume to be published will primarily focus on some often returning fuzzy distinctions and arguments in the debate on human enhancement in general.  The distinction between therapy and enhancement itself is exemplary in this respect.  The distinction is often not meant to merely serve the theoretical purpose of creating definitional clarity; it is also often implicitly used to depict a class of actions  as morally unproblematic (therapy) and a class of actions as morally problematic (enhancement).  The distinction has of course been criticized  because of the blurred lines between therapy and enhancement as it builds on a presupposed vague notion of normal health conditions.  The implicit normative connotations, however, also tend to cause a lot of confusion.  In addition, many of the ethical concerns explicitly put forward in the general debate on human enhancement, especially those in which notions such as unnaturalness, cheating,  injustice, dignity et cetera occur, appear to be multilayered and often overlapping with other arguments.  In their clustered compound guise they can easily obfuscate original intuitions or emotions of indignation, but also block possibilities of resolution and agreement.  When they are meticulously analyzed and reduced to underlying constituents these arguments often become more persuasive or at least manageable.

Authors should email an abstract of their paper (relating to the theme and its elaboration) before 15 September, and upon acceptance on the basis of the abstract, a draft of the full draft paper (in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format) before 1 November 2012, so that the papers can be circulated in due time and the reviewers/ commentators can prepare themselves appropriately.  Only a limited number of external invited contributors to the volume can be reimbursed for their costs. Whether a paper will be included in the volume to be published will be decided after receiving the very final version of the paper after the author’s workshop.

Important Dates

Before 15 September: Send an email to anton.vedder{at}uvt.nl with a 300 words abstract of the paper you intend to submit

22 September: Notification of acceptance

Before 1 November: Submission of full paper

Before 8 November: Circulation of papers

15-16 November 2012: Workshop

7 December: Selected final papers to be handed in.

via Sheelagh McGuinness